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Wednesday, 14 June 2017

India’s Muslim Spring by Hasan Suroor – Book Review

Publisher’s write-up:

‘This book focuses on the current Muslim mood in India,
particularly that of the youth who are trying to move the community into a new –
more positive – direction. Despite a marked increase in religiosity and an
assertion of Muslim identity, young Muslims are more secular and
forward-looking than the older generation. They also have a strong sense of
belonging to India and see no contradiction between being proud Indians and
proud Muslims at the same time.

Keen to draw a line under the past, they are
harbingers of India’s equivalent of ‘Muslim spring’.

People have
various perceptions about the Muslims in India and these perceptions vary
depending on their political and social ideologies. This is a book written by
the London-based Indian journalist,
Hasan Suroor with an intention to
dispel various popular perceptions about
Indian Muslims, wherein, he believes that the young Indian Muslims are starting
a silent revolution akin to the Arab Spring.

Before I get on
to the review, I would clarify a few things; the book was released in 2014,
before the world realised that the effects in Syria, Egypt and Libya were disastrous
and that the Arab spring was effectively a failure. Also, the author focuses a
lot on relations between Hindus and Muslims and since I belong to neither of
the communities, I believe I would have a relatively unbiased view on the book.

I appreciate the
fact that this was not an apologist’s account; and instead he put forth a
vision of hope, that young Muslims of today tend to be liberal, albeit being
more religious than the previous generation,
have their economic and social
interests as a priority and seeing themselves as Indians. He attempted
to dispel the notion that those who are deeply religious see themselves as Muslims first. He also
brings out how a lot of Muslim organisations are going for reform as younger
Muslims don’t blindly follow the Mullahs, rather, understand the religion and
then practise the same.

The author also
has taken a considerable effort in narrating the history of Indian Muslims
since partition, the ghost of partition, the accusation of being a closet
Pakistani supporter, the Shah Bano case, the Babri Masjid demolition and what the author termed
as a the Rushdie test; wherein he
conceded that most of the Muslims would fail the test as some tend to justify
the ban while others disagree with his views but prefer an academic debate rather than a ban.

So, the book was
enlightening for me, personally; because, a lot of the things that he said are
points I already since I was raised in an
urban environment and have many Muslim friends who are practising but at the
same time, are liberal and place their economic interests over voting for
politicians who treat them as a vote bank; however, what I didn’t know was how
their household atmosphere was, the perspectives of the previous generation of
Muslims and how it has evolved over the years.

However, with
all these said, based on the people whom the author interviewed, all those
Muslims are from urban centres who are in jobs in the organised sector and
economically well placed; meaning, they are the people who have come up using
the system and normally, it is rare to find people criticise the same system
which they used to come up. While he justifies it saying that though the real India
lives in villages, people in cities and towns define the national mood;
notwithstanding that argument, I feel it would have been better had he chosen
certain samples across the countries (most were North Indian urban Muslims) and
thus, I felt he manipulated the samples
to get the result that he wanted in order to write the book.

Additionally,
the solutions he offered were affirmative action; which has been tried in the country for several years and evidently,
has not been working. Moreover, he uses UK as an example to support his
solution whereas, in UK, it was time-bound and eventually repealed, wherein,
they shifted to Positive Action than
Positive Discrimination, that is, if two candidates are equally competent, they
are encouraged to increase the diversity of their organisation but are not
insisted that they should hire by virtue of them being members of a particular
minority. I also could not agree with some of his suggestions that the majority community should be magnanimoustowards the minorities; while
peaceful coexistence is what is required, in my view, there need not be any
additional magnanimity beyond the basic nature of human altruism; there is no
need for the majority in any part of the world to compromise for the sake of
the minority.

Going beyond the
scope of the book, there are also
certain other issues; wherein the author very freely uses the word liberal, though, to quote the British politician and counter
extremism acitivist, Maajid Nawaz, ‘Globally, there is a low standard to
declare a Muslim as a liberal; all they are expected to do is to condemn ISIS;
we need to set better standards as even al-qaeda condemns ISIS.’ The author is
also turning a blind eye to the fact that though there is a very welcoming
positive change, those representing these changes are still not perceived as
representatives of the community at large, to quote the British author Douglas
Murray who said this as a rebuttal to
Maajid Nawaz (in a different context as against the earlier statement), ‘I would like it if people like Maajid Nawaz are seen as the
representatives of the community, but evidently, at present they are not, what we see are fundamentalist clerics.’ Thus,
the change that the author claims will take another few years in order for the
current generation to take over to see tangible changes.

To conclude, I would say that the book provided
a fresh insight, dispelling a lot of popular notions and expressed a lot of
hope to look forward to, as a 14% population of the country having a
progressive outlook is certainly great for the country as a whole. Based on
whatever I have stated, I would award the book a six on ten.